


i bleed when i fall down

by redledgers



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Metaphors, Theater - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-26 23:39:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9931319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redledgers/pseuds/redledgers
Summary: she stands on a stage with the weight of the world on her shoulders.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from and inspired by christina perri's "human"

She holds herself together in the stillness of stone walls, an unruly and energetic young girl replaced by something cold and skittish, wary of many and not quite put together. The cracks are hairline, deep and encroaching, but she brushes them aside in the same manner she does wisps of hair. She plays the part just as well as any troupe traveling around Tal’Dorei; the castle and the city have become her stage, her bedroom sits just behind the curtain.

There is something left inside, buried deep down with the bodies of her family, something that still lingers of the little girl she used to be. Something that does not flinch away when touched, nor does it shutter itself inside when left to its own devices. It knocks sometimes, but she pushes it down because there is a weight on her shoulders that is too great for even Atlas to bear and it will crush her, split open the cracks until she is nothing but pieces on the ground. 

Behind the curtain and under the covers, she weeps. The lead is taught by those she hates, groomed to be a daughter, but she speaks a script not meant for her (meant instead for a ghost, a lifeless figure that haunts every step, meant instead for what little life she has left in a blue coat and tattered soul). She is the understudy for the role she never wanted, in a position she never thought she would take, and she is alone. There is no director to guide her, no audience to truly reassure her she is doing well (no family that truly seems to care).

In the quiet moments she finds to herself, she sequesters herself away in the library, craving for the tactile feel of bindings under her fingertips, the edges of pages just thin enough to slice her skin. She aches to lose herself in the stories that would never belong to her, longs for those days by candlelight peering over the shoulder of someone and pointing to pictures. It is a scene better suited to a prologue, a past from which she deviated, an example of everything that could have been if only the heroine’s life hadn’t been dashed to pieces at the edge of a sword, if there had been some dashing prince to save her from a fate she didn’t deserve. Instead she takes care to repair damaged books, gentle and kind to them as she mends bindings and straightens pages. And sometimes, the cracks recede and she feels whole again even if just for a moment.

She wishes to unravel for a day, to stop the soliloquy and take a bow, to let them see who she is outside of this all, but even then she doesn’t know who that is—she’s lost herself in expectations and can’t claw her way out. Maybe on a quiet night when snow settles over a city that sleeps she will indulge and let someone see the truths behind her façade, the cracks in the porcelain.


End file.
